New & Noteworthy
New Understanding of ER Membrane Expansion
January 28, 2022
How lipid metabolism gets coordinated with membrane growth in response to environment has remained an unexplained phenomenon. A recent paper explains key components in how cells manage this response.
Papagiannidis et al. demonstrate a key regulatory step via the transmembrane protein Ice2p. Ice2p affects negative regulation of Pah1p (called lipin in metazoa) by inhibiting the Nem1-Spo7 phosphatase complex, which would normally activate Pah1p by dephosphorylation. The study shows that Ice2p also plays a role in transcriptional regulation of lipid synthesis genes, thereby providing a key pivot in the cellular need to make more membrane in response to ER stress.
Categories: Paper of the Week
Tags: endoplasmic reticulum, lipid regulation, Membrane biogenesis, Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Predicted 3D Structures of Yeast Complexes
January 20, 2022
In an exciting new paper, Humphreys et al. describe the use of deep-learning-based algorithms to predict structures of not only single proteins, but assemblies of proteins. The team used rapid RoseTTAFold combined with the more accurate AlphaFold to build structural models for 106 previously unidentified protein assemblies and 806 complexes that had not been structurally characterized. The complexes have up to five subunits and are involved in numerous critical roles in cell biology.
Go look for your own proteins of interest at the ModelArchive and search in the Home page. Also find the link on the resources section of the SGD Interaction and Protein pages.
Categories: Announcements, Data updates, Paper of the Week
Tags: protein complex, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, yeast protein assembly